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I haven’t written much on this blog in recent years due to bigger concerns in my personal life, but perhaps in the next little while, I’ll post more often.

As I write this, it is the day after the Ohio primary elections held May 8, 2018, and I am worried about the current condition of the GOP as I peruse the election results. I won’t recap any of the vote totals, as that can be found elsewhere. The election results, at least in north central Ohio, tell me that money won every single GOP primary race. This signals that the energy of the grassroots is gone or almost gone. Where are the political upstarts that rocked the establishment GOP candidates during the Obama era? Does it take an Obama presidency to energize the grassroots? Even as recently as the 2016 election cycle, non-establishment candidates enjoyed at least some small measure of success against the status quo. But looking back at yesterday’s elections, I now declare this trend to be dead.

Whether one agreed with “Tea Party” principles or not, the competitiveness of Tea Party candidates signaled an engagement of the grassroots. When the grassroots were energized, campaign cash advantages were not guarantees of success in the GOP primaries. Establishment candidates were more likely to feel the pressure to articulate why they were deserving of voters’ support. I think that’s healthy.

Why this new complacency? Yes, the GOP currently holds the reins of power both in Ohio and in the nation’s capital, but I do not necessarily believe we have the best of the GOP holding those positions. The primaries were the best shot of improving the quality of our representation in government, and I think we blew it. Few debates were held. The Ohio Republican Party did not remain neutral in these primaries. They kept their thumb on the scales. In doing so, their endorsed candidates were relieved of the pressure to articulate why their nominations would be of value to the voters, for they could just go along for the ride knowing that the ORP would fight the nomination battles for them.

Now, with the moneyed candidates, ones that are more loyal to donors than to voters, advancing on to the November 2018 elections, I think the lack of luster among the GOP’s nominees will only make it easier for the Democrats to rebound. The last time I saw such a poor crop of nominees, or worse, was in 2006, a bloodbath of an election year. Granted, this group of nominees is not as tainted by scandal as that group of GOP nominees back in 2006, but the lack of excitement is the same. The weakened influence of the Tea Party evidenced yesterday, I believe, will translate into poor GOP turnout in November. Brace yourselves for a rough ride this fall.

Oh no! A trade war! It will hit consumers! It will make investors nervous! Foreign nations will become our enemies! The damage we do to ourselves will be worse than we do to importers of competing products!

The sky is falling!

The sky will fall eventually, but not on account of this tariff.

It is so funny to hear MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, and other media outlets sounding alarms practically in unison. I am beginning to think that all the media are becoming contrarians. If Trump says something decidedly unambiguous, then the right thing for any media outlet to do is oppose it, just on principle.

If you look at the stuff I’ve written about Trump in the run-up to the 2016 elections, then you know I supported candidates other than Trump in the primaries and urged voters to consider all the presidential candidates, not just Trump and Clinton, when voting in the general election. I distrusted Trump at the outset just by the fact that he is a casino tycoon (I have always opposed gambling). I have not written of Trump in flattering terms.

There are many troubling things that could topple our nation and the world. The financial system was not fixed by the 2008 bailouts. The bad actors in the financial sector implicated in that meltdown fiasco are still there, right? There will still be a huge financial disaster in our future. Count on it. Prepare your families for it.

But this tariff? In the bigger scheme of things, this is no big deal.

Trump is right. Steel and aluminum are strategic industries. If worse comes to worst, our nation does not want to be in a position of having outsourced all of our steel and aluminum production.

Also, those who insist that the government, by imposing tariffs, is picking winners and losers in what is supposed to be a free marketplace need to acknowledge that these proposed tariffs are small potatoes compared to many of the other government interventions in our economy that have distorted the marketplace. Consider the health care insurance industry, for example, and the lobbyist-bought legislation at state and federal levels that have led to a captive marketplace. Consider the telecommunications giants, especially ISPs, cable TV systems, and cell phone companies and the terrible, even predatory, customer “service” they provide because they do not fear new start-ups entering the marketplace in their industries. Lobbyist-bought legislation and executive branch administrative code regulation at state and federal levels has pretty much guaranteed that Comcast, CenturyLink, Time Warner, and their ilk will never be dislodged from atop the heap, no matter how deeply dissatisfied customers become. Obviously, the financial industry does not operate on a level playing field. We all saw that with the undeserved bailouts in 2008 of financial companies deemed “too big to fail.”

Sure, a tariff my cause jitters on Wall Street. Free trade ideologues will denounce protectionism. But the government’s most insidious protectionism is not embodied in these tariffs. The government is very protectionist when it comes to Wall Street.

Remember why Trump won the election? He flipped several states in the Great Lakes region from blue to red–Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin–in addition to carrying purple states like Ohio. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio all have robust Democrat Party organizations, but rank-and-file Democrats stopped taking marching orders from East Coast and West Coast elites within their party. The #MeToo movement has finally addressed some of the West Coast hypocrisies that sowed distrust among Midwest Democrats. The East Coast enjoys the protectionism of the federal government. The East Coast elites and West Coast elites atop the Democrat Party do not share as much common ground with Midwest Democrats as they used to.

The coastal elites drive foreign cars. On the roads of the Midwest, the concentration of American-branded cars is much greater than on the coasts. Midwest Democrats are faced with bread-and-butter issues that the elites do not face. Sales of American-branded cars put food on the tables in the Midwest. Why don’t the coastal elites care whether Midwesterners have food on their tables? With all their wealth, why do they buy so many imports?

The coastal elites want to create sanctuary cities in the exact same locations where the minimum wage is being boosted to $15 an hour. The reason undocumented immigrants are shielded in the cities with high minimum wages is obvious to the average Midwesterner. The undocumented immigrants are being exploited–paid under the table at less than minimum wage–to create a mirage that steep minimum wage hikes are actually viable. “Who will scrub your toilets?” asked a celebrity–one I will not name here–in defense of encouraging undocumented immigration. In the Midwest, we scrub our own toilets. I, myself, worked as a hotel housekeeper and laundry attendant back in the day. I also worked agricultural jobs like picking strawberries in the summertime. But I scrubbed toilets and labored in farm fields in Ohio, not California. I am a white male, not an undocumented immigrant. Midwesterners WILL DO and HAVE DONE the kind of work that the coastal elites say that we are unwilling to do, but Midwesterners do not like competing with exploited workers being paid under the table. If there were no undocumented workers, employers would have to pay more for toilet-scrubbing workers’ wages. The presence of an exploited undocumented class of workers totally undercuts any organic efforts at improving compensation for toilet-scrubbing work. Raising the minimum wage is not organic–it’s artificial. And when raising the minimum wage occurs artificially at the same time that undocumented immigration is encouraged, then that only persuades employers to bypass the minimum wage and exploit undocumented workers for toilet-scrubbing duties. The Midwest does not want this coastal trend to infiltrate the Midwest, but that infiltration has already gained a foothold.

The steel and aluminum tariffs, if they pan out, will mostly aid the midsection of the country. Why should the midsection of the country be worried that Wall Street does not approve? The midsection of the country did not approve of Wall Street bailouts, but had to swallow them anyway. The tariffs would hardly turn the tables on the status quo, but it’s a start. To the Midwest voter, Clinton was status quo and Trump was the only hope at turning the tables. One might further qualify that Midwest voter as being Midwest white voter due to the strong preference for Clinton among nonwhite voters, but one also has to acknowledge that the nonwhite voter turnout in 2016 did not measure up to nonwhite voter turnout in the prior two presidential election cycles, suggesting the coastal elites may have lost some ground there, too.

So the protests against the tariffs are loudest along the coasts. The Midwest does not have a problem with that.

In the GOP presidential primaries of 1996 and 2000, I voted for Alan Keyes. He was an ambassador, so he has some sense of international consequences of domestic policies. In terms of taxation, Alan Keyes favored tariffs over income taxes. Our nation’s founders levied tariffs. They did not tax personal income. The US Constitution had to be amended to even allow for income taxes. Keyes made a very persuasive case that the national government should be leveraging trade for generating government revenue, and that income taxes erode the sovereignty of the people of this nation. I do not fear tariffs.

As for trade wars, they might be scary with another president at the helm, but I have to acknowledge that Trump is not your usual president. In fact, Trump has a level of expertise in negotiating deals that other presidents have not possessed. I actually feel quite confident in Trump’s capabilities in the trade arena. There are things Trump is terrible at and there are things that Trump is good at. This is something Trump could excel at. I’m on board with the tariffs.

Dear readers, especially Ohio registered voters, it is time to vote for President and Vice President of the United States, as we do every four years. The early voting period has begun. There is no reason to push voting off until the last minute, if you’ve done your homework and investigated the candidates and issues appearing on the ballots.

There are more than two political parties.

Oh, maybe you’re holding off on voting until all the “October surprises” have been revealed. If you are, then you are probably still entertaining thoughts about voting for the Trump/Pence Republican ticket or the Clinton/Kaine Democrat ticket. I’m not. I’m so done with both of them. To be fair, I do think that Trump is wholly justified in remaining at the top of the Republican ticket. He won the party nomination fair and square. Fortunately, in our nation, we don’t have to vote for a party slate. We can vote for individual candidates on an a la carte basis. Our voting system is so much better than the parliamentary elections held in so many other parts of the world. Also, the media tries to rigidly uphold the two-party system (Democrat and Republican) in the United States; but the truth is, there are more candidates to choose from than just Trump or Clinton. I’m glad of that. If I could only vote between the two of them, I would pull the lever for Trump, but I’m so happy that I don’t have to (and I won’t).

Your ballot will list more candidates for president than just Trump and Clinton.

Ohio’s ballot also lists Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka as Green Party POTUS and VPOTUS candidates, Richard Duncan and Ricky Johnson as independent POTUS and VPOTUS candidates, and Gary Johnson and William Weld as Libertarian POTUS and VPOTUS candidates. Maybe you’re thinking, “those other candidates are nobodies who couldn’t possibly be experienced/skillful/prepared/savvy/qualified enough to be President,” but, if so, you may be mistaken. For example, the Libertarian ticket–Johnson and Weld–features POTUS and VPOTUS candidates who have both been state governors. So I would urge voters to take more than a cursory glance at independent and minor party candidates this election cycle. You may find candidates among them that are superior to the ones that the two major parties have nominated.

Also, there are POTUS and VPOTUS candidates that you are able to vote for who are not listed on the ballot.

I’m talking about write-in candidates. You can only vote for one pair of POTUS/VPOTUS candidates, so if you intend to vote for a write in, you have to make sure you didn’t inadvertently cast votes for one of the pairs already listed on the ballot. A word of advice: Don’t just write “none of the above” as a protest write-in vote. It won’t get counted. In order for a write-in vote to be counted, you must write in the name of a candidate who actually met the qualifications to be a write-in candidate as determined by the office of the Ohio Secretary of State. Please be aware that the workers at the polls are partisan (equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans at each voting location, ideally), so they have no interest in volunteering information about write-in candidates. If you directly ask them for a list of the names of qualified write-in candidates, then I think they would be obliged to respond, but you would be better off if you did this homework in advance and examined the write-in candidate list ahead of your visit to your polling place. This year, the POTUS and VPOTUS ticket I am voting for is among the qualified write-ins. Here is Ohio’s list of qualified POTUS/VPOTUS write-in candidates for the November 2016 general election (POTUS candidate’s name of each write-in ticket appears to the left of each “/” with VPOTUS candidate’s name of each ticket appears after each “/”):

James Jerome Bell/Scheem Milton Hempstead

Michael Bickelmeyer/Robert Young

Darrell L. Castle/Scott N. Bradley

Cherunda Fox/Roger Kushner

Ben Hartnell/Dave Marshall

Tom Hoefling/Steve Schulin

Bruce E. Jaynes/Roger W. Stewart

Chris Keniston/Deacon Taylor

Barry Kirschner/Rick Menefield

Laurence Kotlikoff/Edward Leamer

Joseph Maldonado/Douglas Terranova

Michael Andrew Maturen/Juan Antonio Munoz

Evan McMullin/Nathan Johnson

Monica Moorehead/Lamont Lilly

Joe Schriner/Joe Moreaux

Mike Smith/Daniel White

Josiah R. Stroh/Paul Callahan

Douglas W. Thomson/Thomas A. Ducro, Jr.

Notice that the list of write-in candidates does not include any mention of party affiliations. This does not mean that all of these tickets have no affiliations to political parties. The Darrell L. Castle/Scott N. Bradley ticket, for example, is actually affiliated with the Constitution Party . . . a political party that some Tea Party voters might take an interest in due to shared notions of limited government and close adherence to the U.S. Constitution, yet more tolerant of the rule of law than, say, a number of Libertarians that might feel a little too restricted by laws in general. On the other hand, the Evan McMullin/Nathan Johnson ticket is an independent ticket, for McMullin has cast aside his former affiliation with the Republicans from the time he served as a Congressional aide. As far as McMullin, a former CIA operative, is concerned, if Trump personifies what the Republican Party currently stands for, then McMullin wants to make a clean break with that. So feel free to google and research the candidates listed here. If you find your favorite POTUS/VPOTUS ticket among the qualified write-ins, then I recommend you jot down your selection in a little note to yourself to take with you to your polling location to make it easier to cast your write-in vote.

No, you’re not throwing your vote away if you vote for a ticket other than a major party ticket.

As long as you are casting your vote for an eligible candidate of your liking, your vote will be counted and it will have an impact. How large of an impact? I don’t know. We’ll have to see how the future unfolds. In my opinion, in this election year, we may begin to see some movement to break the stranglehold that the two major political parties have on our government, since the Dem and Rep nominees for prez this time around are not so popular. Or, perhaps the Republicans and Democrats may remain dominant, but undertake reforms if they perceive that they are each becoming too unpalatable to the U.S. electorate. If they reform, or if there is any other shake-up on the horizon, votes for candidates from outside the two major parties may very well influence those political shifts. Especially if you are unhappy with the direction that the nation is headed in, don’t stay home. Vote.

FBI Director James Comey held a press conference on Tuesday morning, July 5, 2016, to reveal publicly what had become of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and computer server during her term in the office of Secretary of State. Criminal charges are not forthcoming from the investigation, but Clinton was characterized as being “extremely careless” in her handling of classified communications in ways that violated federal statutes. It is also clear that Clinton’s accounts of her own conduct on the matter are untruthful. MSNBC’s Morning Joe has a clip highlighting excerpts from Comey’s speech juxtaposed with excerpts of Clinton’s false narrative of her handling of classified information via email and computer devices. This clip is less than 2 minutes in length:

James Comey has a “straight shooter” reputation. He has heretofore been considered highly ethical by politicians of both major political parties. Some are now second-guessing his ethics, for liberal politicians are complaining that he overstepped by sharing investigation results when he shouldn’t have, for no criminal charges are forthcoming, while conservative politicians are complaining that Comey has overstepped by precluding the bringing of criminal charges by “reasonable” prosecutors.

As an aside, I have been severely disappointed by CNN coverage of Clinton this year. They have played too much softball with her, which amounts to carrying water for her. The fact that I can find more probing questions and scathing criticisms of Clinton on MSNBC signals how far off the track CNN has become from providing fair and balanced coverage. Yes, CNN prepared a video clip similar to the one above from MSNBC; what is lacking is the harder hitting conversations such as shown in the 15-minute Morning Joe segment below:

Also, headlines favorable to Clinton are not only as easy to find as on MSNBC, the headlines unfavorable to Clinton are buried deeper on CNN than MSNBC. Part of this is a function of MSNBC’s focus on politics over other types of news stories, but though CNN covers a broader range of news, I still call into question the newsworthiness of many of said headlines compared to the newsworthiness of the stories critical of Clinton.

But back to the center of the story: The press conference the Obama administration envisioned for the wrapup of the FBI investigation of Clinton was to be a joint one, with a spokesperson (perhaps Attorney General Loretta Lynch, herself) or spokespersons from the US Department of Justice accompanying whoever the FBI provided as a spokesperson. Comey decided to spring this press conference as a surprise, both as to the timing and as to the content, in order to avoid the appearance of the complicity of the US Department of Justice in letting Clinton off the hook. In my view, this ironically underscores that the US Department of Justice is complicit. I have no doubt that the US Department of Justice would have stage managed this press conference very differently and would have not shed nearly as much light into the investigation as Comey did in his solo appearance. Though I, like other conservatives, wonder at Comey’s seemingly premature or misguided ruling out of prosecution, I find it easy to forgive him for it when I consider that the public would not be in possession of the truth were it not for Comey’s initiative in stepping to a microphone on short notice . . . such short notice that he effectively circumvented any other government entity from interfering with his message.

Loretta Lynch was coming up short in appearing to be above-board. However, even before she had a private meeting last week with Bill Clinton, in fact, even during the term of her predecessor, the politicization of the Department of Justice was already becoming visible. As I mentioned in my prior post, at some depositions, the Justice Department had dispatched its own lawyers to make sure that the scope of questions asked during investigations were narrow. The Justice Department appears to have much to hide. They have skin in the game. As I wrote in the prior post, not only is Clinton susceptible to blackmail by our geopolitical foes, like Russia, so is the Obama administration. This brings me to my next point: Clinton had to dodge prosecution in order to keep Obama’s flank protected. It’s why Obama has been certain from the get-go that there would not be a prosecution of Clinton. He couldn’t allow a prosecution because it would have exposed his own vulnerabilities and culpabilities. The envisioned stage-managed joint press conference had apparently been discussed well in advance of the conclusion of the investigation, showing that a determination to not prosecute had already been made. Comey’s preemption of that joint press conference by his own solo appearance is, I’m sure, more than a little bit worrisome to both Obama and Clinton.

We can expect to see Obama on the Clinton campaign trail a lot for the remainder of the election season. His best protection is getting her elected. Her best shot at election in light of these damaging revelations is to energize Obama voters. Expect her campaign to be contacting all voters that were identified as supporters of the previous Obama campaigns. Black voters are especially important to Obama and Clinton. Black voters have held Obama in very high esteem and they absolutely would not want Obama’s legacy tarnished. Any further erosion of confidence in Clinton leaves Obama that much closer to the possibility of being tarnished. The two, Obama and Clinton, will likely meet the same fate: They are triumphant together, or they are doomed together. Do not marvel that former intraparty foes are now cooperating closely, for they both have much to lose if Clinton does not succeed.

Syria is a place where the Islamic State thrives but where the USA has been unwilling to go. There are even rumblings, purportedly from Foreign Service officers, that the USA ought to change strategies in Syria, including ousting Assad as ruler of Syria along with taking the fight to the Islamic State. VP Biden has said that we don’t dare do that because no one has a crystal ball to show how such a story would end. It could end quite badly, with a failed state (chaos) in a strategic location. Nonetheless, with the Islamic State taking credit for violence in Bangladesh overnight, and an airport bombing in Istanbul just a couple of days ago, and a mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, on top of still-seared-in-our-memory attacks in Brussels, San Bernadino, and Paris, the USA’s actions against the Islamic State confined to just Iraqi territory, do not appear to be bringing an end to the terror. Russia has taken some actions against terrorists on Syrian soil, but Russia is also interested in protecting Assad, a useful pawn, just as Iran has, for many decades, been a useful proxy for Russia.

I ran across a video clip from MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, July 1, 2016 wherein the pundits just acted bewildered over the Obama administration’s ineptitude in countering the Islamic State. The plan appears to be to leave all Syrian-territory campaigns against the Islamic State in the hands of the Assad government (which is allied with and militarily aided by Russia and Iran). The pundits on Morning Joe, in their bewilderment, surmise that the Obama administration is too risk-averse to do what needs to be done in Syria: Extinguish the Islamic Stand and depose Assad.

Click the following to open up the Morning Joe segment referenced above:

I’m not at all bewildered. Russia has all the leverage. They are blackmailing the Obama administration. How do I deduce that? I think if I just connect a couple of dots for you, I think you’ll be able to connect them with other dots so that you can see a bigger picture emerging.

When Syria crossed the red line of using chemical weapons, instead of punishing Assad, Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated with the Assad regime so that chemical weapons would be dismantled. This is a clear signal that the USA did not envision anyone leading an independent Syria other than Assad. So, despite the various factions jockeying for power in Syria, and despite the fact that we may feel sympathetic to one or more of the factions fighting to topple Assad, Kerry’s agreement reached with Assad underlines that the Obama administration will not seek regime change in Syria. I am not surprised by this. As for the reason why I am not surprised at this stance, it flows from a postmodern ideology (which I don’t agree with). I don’t plan on delving into the ideology in this blog post. It is sufficient to merely connect the dots to show Obama had no intention of toppling Assad or mobilizing our military in Syria.

But I will go further to say that not only does Obama have no intention of intervening in Syria, the Russians will make sure that Obama does not change his mind.

Remember that Clinton email server controversy? Oh, yeah! It’s all over the news! The FBI has been investigating it! Right? But oftentimes, when key witnesses have been deposed, not only do the witnesses lawyer up as they head into these depositions, but the State Department and Justice Department have also, from time to time, sent their own lawyers. Why? To limit the scope of what questions the FBI asks. So, connect this dot. What does it mean when the State Department and the Justice Department (of which the FBI is a part!!!) see to it that the FBI inquiries are very narrow? It’s one thing when questions go unanswered (and some witnesses have pled the 5th Amendment). We, the public, are only permitted transcripts, so even our window into whatever little answers there are is a very narrow window. It’s entirely another thing when question after question that the FBI would like to ask is considered out-of-bounds. I say that the dots connected here are that the integrity of both the State Department and the Justice Department could be compromised if all questions could be asked and were answered. If all facts came to light, it would devastate more than just Hillary Clinton. State and Justice have skin in the game.

Hillary Clinton, for her part, wanted to be sure that any personal communications were to be safeguarded on the private server. Never mind the classified top secret government information, for concern over leakage of that would be secondary to leakage over Clinton’s personal communications.

The mainstream media, for the most part, have been downplaying the Clinton’s private email server as a mistake. The server could have been successfully hacked, but we don’t know that, so says the MSM. So as long as we don’t know if the server was hacked, this mistake is forgivable and no harm has been done?

What if, on the other hand, the server was successfully hacked and Russia possesses ALL of the information that was on it, not just the top secret classified stuff, which might include troubling info about State and Justice, but Hillary’s personal stuff, too. Since the Reagan administration, the Bush family, the Clinton family, and the Obama family have safeguarded each other’s White House secrets. Though Republican voters had very little interest in a Jeb Bush POTUS candidacy, I think the Obamas and the Clintons were very much depending on a Bush nomination. If Bush had been the presumptive nominee, his interest would have probably been confined to winning, not exposing Clinton or Obama, for they could expose two former Bush presidents. If Russia possessed ALLof that information, Bush would probably suppress as much of the information as he could. The mood of the electorate, though, has been for outsiders to oust the insiders. If we, the voters, could trade places with an “outsider” candidate, like Trump, and we, as the outsider candidate, became dimly aware that the Russians possessed ALL of that information, would we want it? Somewhere in that information that Russia would have is something that is “Kryptonite” to not only Hillary, but to the Justice Department, and to the State Department, for that’s what we can infer by all the lawyering up and the narrow limits placed upon the FBI inquiries. So, if we as the outsider candidate, were aware that records exist of scandal and corruption, would we, unlike a Jeb Bush, have an appetite to expose it? Such a scenario, then, would strengthen the hand of the Russians, for Clinton and Obama are in a more precarious situation than if they were running against Jeb.

The only way to wipe out the Islamic State is to get Russia and Iran to do it, for the Assad regime is not powerful enough to repel the Islamic State, nor will Russia allow anyone to interfere with Assad or Iran. They have blackmailed the Obama administration with all that they know about our government’s corruption and scandals at the highest levels. Obama cannot change course on Syria even if he wanted to (but he doesn’t).

How bad could the corruption, the scandals, possibly be? For now, I leave those dots for you, the readers, to connect. You’ve been hearing bits and pieces of things, haven’t you?

By the way, Saudi Arabia: For all the influence that you think you bought by donating to the Clinton Global Initiative, you are not as protected from Iran as you think you are. Russia poses an existential threat to Clintonian power, so that means Iran has more leverage than you.

A common theme appearing in coming-of-age tales is one of a youth who becomes disenchanted with a hero. The youth discovers the hero has flaws. The youth becomes a bit cynical. The youth feels disillusioned. The youth doesn’t look at the hero the same way again. It’s just a part of growing up.

But then one is not all the way grown up at that point. One has to grow up a little bit more and not only be forgiving of flaws, but giving permission to others to be flawed. Why? Because no one is perfect and because no one ought to coerce another to give up their flaws. We have to respect agency–people making choices about their own lives . . . and if someone doesn’t make any wrong choices, then that somebody isn’t making choices, period. Furthermore, one only has to look in the mirror to find a person who needs forgiveness for being flawed, for making wrong choices.

So as I reflect on the passing of George Voinovich and what George Voinovich meant to me, I have to own up to making a hero out of him. By September 2009, I was disenchanted. Now, I find my criticisms a bit harsh and now I find myself wondering why I didn’t try to muster some forgiveness sooner. I need to look in my mirror and take a good long look at a flawed person again to cement in my mind the need for forgiveness.

I first remember Voinovich from my boyhood, when he was mayor of Cleveland. He performed two miracles. One was getting elected as mayor of Cleveland as a Republican. That he had been a Cuyahoga County commissioner some time prior to that was amazing enough, but Cleveland mayor? Republicans just don’t get elected as Cleveland mayors. It just doesn’t happen. At least, not anymore. There have been mayoral elections in Cleveland where Democrat primaries settled the mayoral races. The other was that he led a Cleveland economic renaissance immediately after his predecessor, Dennis Kucinich, had led the city to financial default. If only Detroit could have been so lucky as to have a person like Voinovich take over as mayor after Kwame Kilpatrick was ousted.

He went on to be Ohio’s governor, and then U.S. Senator. He was the rare Republican who could sweep the vote across 88 counties.

One of the issues that I really felt close to Voinovich on was his opposition to casino gambling. His steadfast stance on the issue was perhaps the main reason I lionized him. The casino lobbyists had infested Ohio by the swarms, targeting weak and corrupt legislators of both parties. The lobbyists kept saying that casino legalization would be an easy revenue raiser. Voinovich had brought Cleveland back from financial default without resorting to gimmicks like gambling. The lobbyists were doling out campaign contributions left and right, but Voinovich wasn’t having any of it. It’s refreshing to see politicians who will not be bought by the agents of sleaze.

I really feel like Voinovich’s star shone brightest when he held executive office. Not so much legislative office. He was better at on-the-spot and uncompromising executive decisions than the highly deliberative and compromising legislative decisions.

My first taste of government service came as a volunteer intern in the office of Governor George Voinovich. Though my tasks were menial clerical ones, I felt like I had an excellent aerial view of Ohio’s political landscape from atop the Vern Riffe State Office Tower. I assisted with the filing of the “Governor’s Clips.” Each day, staffers combed through the print media to assemble a digest of the day’s political stories. This digest kept the governor informed about the issues without occupying too much of his time. This was back in the day before internet killed print media, and back when filing cabinets held paper files rather than computers holding data files. After the governor read each day’s clips, that wasn’t the end of them. They had to be filed for possible future retrieval. They had to be filed according to date, according to source, according to location, according to the names of people in the news clips, according to issues, etc. I do that on this blog with tags. With paper files, tags don’t quite cut it. The date, location, and source filing was easy. That was done by others before I even arrived at the office. My task was to skim through the stories, themselves, to pull out the keywords, then make as many photocopies of the clipping as I needed in order to file away each story according to each keyword.

Working with the “Governor’s Clips” gave me a brief glimpse into my political future when I encountered an article outlining a state legislator’s gambling expansion proposals: Some guy named Joe Koziura wanted a casino built on Lorain’s lakefront. I was incensed. Years later, in 2002 and 2004, I would run against that same Joe Koziura for the office of state representative, but lose both times.

Until 2009, I had voted for Voinovich every time his name appeared on my ballot. I had handed out his campaign literature door-to-door. I had attended some of his fundraisers (which meant that some of his campaign money came from me). I had also worked phone banks getting out the vote on his behalf. But the chinks in my hero’s armor had begun to show. Congress bailed out Wall Street in 2008, something it should not have done. I didn’t understand Voinovich’s voting patterns. When I finally paid a visit to the offices of the U.S. Senate in Washington, DC, I figured it out. Those office buildings, especially the Hart Senate Building, resembled palaces. Democracy gives way to aristocracy in the rarefied air of these Senate offices. It was the Beltway Bubble. Our Senators are too far removed from the real world, and even a man as principled as George Voinovich succumbed to the disengagement with the real world.

In the upcoming Senate race, I have no love for Ted Strickland, who reneged on his pledge against the expansion of gambling on his watch as Ohio governor. Voinovich and Strickland had touched base on the topic of casinos, and Strickland had told Voinovich that he would hold the line against them. He lied. He lied to George Voinovich. He lied to Ohio. Strickland doesn’t deserve Ohio’s vote. I here and now endorse Rob Portman for reelection. However, I would note that Portman has been around DC for far too long. Between a stint in the US House, and a stint in the US Senate, Portman served in the George W. Bush administration. I would urge Portman to (get reelected and) use this upcoming Senate term to groom someone else to succeed him. Make that two someone elses, for we need someone to oust and succeed Sherrod Brown, too. And I would say that we need more diverse representation than what we’ve had. Portman has had “listening” tours around Ohio so that he feels like he hears from folks outside the bubble, but I would say to Portman that, at some point, before he serves any additional terms in DC beyond the next one, that he needs to BE one of the folks from outside the bubble if he’s to remain useful as a representative of Ohioans. This is what I learned about the bubble on my trip to DC. Even a hero like Voinovich could not make sound decisions after spending too much time in the DC bubble.

Farewell, George Voinovich. We didn’t end up with quite the Ohio that we wanted. Four casinos are legal in Ohio now. The lobbyists wouldn’t be denied. But as long as you were in the real world with us, outside of that bubble, no lobbyist could cross your conscience. We need a government with a conscience. Badly. And so I should have forgiven you a long time ago. I do forgive you.

If you’ve been reading Buckeye RINO since its inception, then you probably know how I feel about the gambling industry. I’m totally against it. I’m even against state lotteries. I don’t even play bingo or buy raffle tickets . . . even for charity. If I feel like contributing money to a charity, I’ll do it as a straight up donation rather than as an entry into a game of chance. I’ve written many times about how the gambling industry is a fraud industry. All the marketing for gambling tells you that you have chances to win. The truth is, the house always wins. This means, in the aggregate, gamblers lose. Right now the media is fixated on the fraud that was Trump University. It would be helpful if the media would also fixate on the even bigger fraud that the gambling industry perpetrates. Hey media! . . . want to go after Trump University? Fine. How about going after Trump casinos, too? How about going after all the casinos no matter who they’re owned by? After all, the more money consumers spend on gambling, the less money they have for anything worthwhile. Gambling redistributes wealth in the wrong direction. Gambling feeds economic contraction. Gambling compromises lawenforcement, especially casinos, for casinos are used for money laundering. The sad tales of those few consumers who complained about the value of their education at Trump University pale in comparison to the sad tales of those who have lost so much more at casinos. Leave it to the media to strain at gnats and swallow camels.

Why should we be surprised that Trump cannot admit that Trump University is a fraud? Why should we be astonished that Trump lashed out at a judge, any judge, for releasing information about suits being pursued against Trump University? Casino owners would never admit that they perpetrate fraud and that an important part of their business is laundering money. Deflect, deflect, deflect. Trump has called into question the bias of the judge because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. Guess what? If the judge had been a white Presbyterian New York Republican male, like Trump, the strategy would still have been to deflect, deflect, deflect. The demographic background of the judge wouldn’t have saved any judge from Trump’s attacks so long as the judge did something that met with Trump’s disapproval. Remember that casino owners are special people with special rights. Casino owners are entitled to more than the average citizen. When it comes to public servants such as judges and legislators, casino owners view them with contempt because either they are contemptible because they can be bought or they are contemptible because they can’t be bought. Gambling buys politicians. Remember why Trump has donated to Hillary Clinton in the past? Because Trump buys all the politicians that he can. He finds that contemptible. Trump self-funded his primary campaign to show that he could not be bought like Hillary. But then there are other public servants, like the judge in this Trump University case, who can’t be bought or persuaded, who, since they stand in Trump’s way, they are also to be treated with contempt.

What is novel about this election cycle is that casino owners in the past were donors to political campaigns. They weren’t politicians, themselves. Donald Trump is now a politician. He’s on the ballot. A casino owner’s business is a sleazy one, which makes running for office quite a dicey proposition, as it’s hard to dismiss the sleaze factor when the political opposition puts a target on one’s back. I think the fact that Hillary Clinton was anointed as the inevitable Democrat nominee emboldened Trump to run. I think if the undisputed Democrat frontrunner were trustworthy, ethical, and incorruptible, Trump would have stayed away from the presidential race.

My disparagement of Trump should not be mistaken for support for Clinton. I believe Ambassador Stevens is dead because someone in the administration wanted him dead. The terrorists who took him out in Benghazi acted on information. Clinton didn’t safeguard information. I find it telling that at a Cheryl Mills deposition (Mills being a chief operative of Hillary Clinton’s), not only did Mills have three attorneys there to help her navigate the interrogation, there were also two attorneys for the State department and two attorneys for the Justice department, meaning that a lot hinged upon what was permitted to be asked and how minimal the responses needed to be. In other words, if Cheryl Mills had been inclined to freely answer truthfully about every last detail, the integrity of the State department and the integrity of the Justice department would have been impugned just as much as the integrity of Hillary Clinton. Mills had to walk a tightrope. She wanted to keep all of the information to herself, but she had to make at least a minimal effort to appear that she was cooperating. We’ve only been given transcripts of the deposition, for the judge agreed that video would have been too politically damaging to the Clinton campaign. The State department is putting on a charade that they are cooperating. They allowed the inspector general report to come out (but if State were really on top of things, they would have had an inspector general in office throughout Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, but, instead, there was never an inspector general at State for the whole of Clinton’s tenure there). The Justice department is putting on a charade by conducting an investigation (but if the FBI, a branch of Justice, is doing the questioning, why were two lawyers from Justice present to make certain that the FBI’s inquiries were limited and make certain that Mill’s responses were also limited?). Just now, the media is starting to learn that archived footage and transcripts of official press conferences at the White House and at State have been doctored so that future historians would only able to cobble together a revised history. I think Ambassador Stevens was the type of person who personally understood shady things were going on and also personally disliked that he had to put up with them. I think someone in the Obama administration figured that they’d rather have a dead Ambassador Stevens than a whistleblower Ambassador Stevens. I think Edward Snowden is convinced that the Obama administration would have preferred a dead Edward Snowden than a whistleblower Edward Snowden, because Snowden didn’t blow the whistle until he was safely away. I think if Hillary Clinton is elected to office, the corruption of the federal government will only worsen. We’ve seen the IRS politicized, the FBI politicized, the State department politicized; and the list will go on.

I will not vote for Hillary Clinton; I guarantee that. I’m hoping that Bernie Sanders will succeed in his quest to wrest the Democrat nomination away from Hillary. I also don’t plan to vote for Trump, though I see a silver lining if he were to be elected (a shake-up of the establishment). Especially if there’s no Bernie in the equation (but maybe even if there is), I will probably vote for a minor party candidate, which is not unprecedented for me. I vote my conscience.

I am Daniel Jack Williamson, a graduate of The Ohio State University, a native of Ohio, a Republican voter, and a former Republican candidate. My moniker, "Buckeye RINO," is a hat-tip to my fellow conservatives who think I'm not Republican enough.